French Rhapsody

by Antoine Laurain

  Before switching off the computer, Alain typed in ‘new wave’. About a hundred and thirty-four million results came up. According to Wikipedia, new wave (or ‘nouvelle vague’ which took its name from the French cinematic movement of the 1950s) was used to describe ‘the new, mainly Anglo-American pop-rock groups and artists who followed on from the explosion of punk, incorporating electronic music, experimental music, disco and pop’. Also listed were all the sub-categories of new wave: synthpop, electronic music, New Romantics and cold wave.

  That’s all rather clinical, thought Alain, for whom new wave and cold wave came together in a subtle fusion that had produced that cold but chic, industrial but luxurious sound. Earlier on, with the Beatles, the Stones or even Led Zeppelin it was easy to recognise the various instruments and there was hardly any difference between the recorded sound and the live sound. Mixing and working up sounds had evolved in less than ten years, led by pioneers like Kraftwerk before coming to full fruition with the Eurythmics. Poetry sung in English accompanied by sophisticated melodies invaded the French music scene in the early eighties. Alain’s view was that wave had been heralded several years earlier by one song. A cold, pure, magical song. A crystal of a song lasting three minutes forty-five seconds. Even though there were sometimes disagreements within the group, everyone agreed on that point: the song was genius. To Alain, it was more than genius, it was quite simply the ideal song. All the artistic attempts of Western poetry from Ronsard to Baudelaire were just drafts, just vague, clumsy pieces of research in comparison. Paul Éluard, André Breton and Apollinaire had, in their own modern times, come close to that ideal without quite succeeding. Finally, in the year of our Lord 1974, the singer and composer Daniel Bevilacqua, known as Christophe, aided by the young author Jean-Michel Jarre, succeeded in describing love and the paralysing impossibility of expressing it fully to the object of your affections. They had written ‘Les Mots Bleus’.

  Alain had discovered it in that halcyon period between fifteen and twenty-one, the only time of life when you are truly capable of experiencing love. There is, for that brief period, an openness of mind and body which never returns again. Life will ensure that your brain and your time are taken over by other commitments: preparation for exams, worries about the future, then your career, courses, salary, money, paperwork, etc. The interlude arrives much too early in life, at an age when, apart from some overachievers, experts in flirting and sex, no one is ready.

  Alain well remembered his adolescent self in his parents’ apartment, hanging out in the bedroom that would later become his son’s. He lay on the bed listening to the high-pitched, tragic voice of Christophe telling the remarkable story of the girl coming out of the mairie and of the boy who wanted to talk to her. The hypnotic music and the reverberation of the singer’s voice, as if he were declaiming couplets in a Romanesque church, took him to vertiginous highs that no drug could have given him. ‘Les Mots Bleus’ addressed itself to another part of his brain, touched his sensibility in an incredible way that brought tears to his eyes. The second part that began:

  Il n’y a plus d’horloge, plus de clocher

  Dans le square les arbres sont couchés

  Je reviens par le train de nuit

  Sur le quai je la vois

  Qui me sourit

  Il faudra bien qu’elle comprenne

  À tout prix

  was almost too much to bear. He pictured himself on an empty platform at Gare de Lyon on a warm summer evening. He was getting off a train carrying a heavy travel bag. Bérengère came towards him in slow motion, then threw herself into his arms. He felt her body against his, the softness of her neck, the smell of her hair, then found her mouth, and her tongue excited by the desire of their reunion. In this sequence worthy of a David Lean film, of which he would have been the producer, the director and the only member of the audience, there could be no doubt: she was his girlfriend. Carried away by the lacerating music and his mental images, he could not stop himself from sobbing at the end of the song. It was magical. It was an infinite pain that he had never felt before. That he would never feel again.

  He had been nineteen and Bérengère was not his girlfriend, but the girlfriend of a boy a little older than they were, who was already earning a lot of money. He was the one who paid for the recording of five songs in an upmarket studio that he rented complete with two sound engineers. At twenty-three he had already succeeded in life. He was the brother of their lyricist; he had a melancholic expression and a cat-like smile. He was already known just by his initials: JBM.

  The Man with the Cat-like Smile

  The black Lincoln wove silently through the dark empty streets. The phone in Aurore’s pocket had been buzzing for the past half-hour with a stream of new texts and voicemails.

  ‘You were right, I shouldn’t have gone,’ remarked JBM, continuing to stare out of the window at the buildings flashing past.

  Aurore, his assistant, said nothing. The driver changed down a gear and the Lincoln entered the Louvre tunnel. Around the tunnel’s exit, by the gilded statue of Joan of Arc on Place des Pyramides, is where the ranks of the extreme right gather on 1 May each year. As JBM gazed out at the lights of the tunnel, the staff of Le Parisien were writing tomorrow’s front-page headline – ‘Could he be the one?’ – while Libé was toying with ‘Did someone say Mazart?’ Meanwhile L’Express had just made the decision to change its cover, sending half the newsroom reaching for Berocca tablets, and opted for ‘Will that really do for tonight?’ Treading more cautiously, but not wishing to be left out, Le Figaro had cleverly thrown together a profile piece provisionally entitled ‘So who is Jean-Bernard Mazart?’

  François Larnier, who had won his party’s backing to stand for president at the primaries and was lined up to appear on the France Télévisions show The Big Debate, had come up with the idea that inviting JBM along might add an extra dimension to the panel, and his communications advisers agreed. An invitation had gone out to the economist and businessman several weeks before. In spite of Aurore’s reservations, JBM had eventually agreed to take part. They were a good half-hour into the broadcast when JBM came on set, greeted by warm smiles from the official candidate and his team. The programme’s presenters gave a brief round-up of his career to date: he had graduated in economics, studied at MIT, had pioneered investment in internet start-ups and was now at the helm of Arcadia, one of the top ten French groups listed in the CAC 40 index with a portfolio of forty-five companies worldwide, mostly in the sphere of software development and firewalls, along with interests in hundreds of web feeds.

  JBM had the gift of incredible economic foresight. He had predicted the sub-prime mortgage crisis three months ahead of the crash in an interview that had gone almost unnoticed at the time. He had also anticipated the burst of the dot-com bubble and, even more brilliantly, had invested massively in its predecessor, the Minitel, at a time when users saw it as a gimmick. His detractors dismissed him as a simplistic economist, but JBM would always reply, ‘I’m not an economist; I studied economics. It’s a different thing.’ He claimed it all came down to common sense: however complex a market was, it would always come back to the age-old question of supply and demand, of a person with something to sell and another who may or may not wish to buy it.

  Journalists loved him because the clear examples he gave allowed them to write articles their readers would understand. The impending sub-prime crisis was summed up as follows: ‘It’s like trying to fit an elephant inside your flat. The doors and walls are going to be an issue, so you can widen the doors and knock down the partitions, but that won’t solve the underlying problem. The problem is the floor – it’s going to collapse under the weight of the elephant, taking the animal, you, and probably the floors below and all your neighbours with it. At the moment, the analysts are only seeing the problem in terms of doors and walls – I see the floor. They see only the volume of the animal – I see its weight.’ JBM had put smiles on many newspaper editors’ faces with his
tale of elephants and weak floors. ‘JBM’s talking in nursery rhymes for kids, Dumbo before he found his magic feather,’ jeered a well-known financial commentator. ‘Web visionary he may have been, but his economic analysis leaves much to be desired.’ A satirical weekly magazine even depicted JBM as a ringmaster holding a hoop in the shape of France, waiting for an elephant to jump through it. A month later, the economics journalists had stopped laughing, and the mere mention of JBM’s name had the effect of a drop of vinegar falling on an oyster. JBM had also made a name for himself by upgrading the operating system used by the military in only two months – rather than the three years projected by the government. The bug-ridden Louvois system, which had never managed to pay soldiers the correct amount, became a political hot potato as soon as it was replaced by the Arcadia creation Vauban, which never failed to make a payment.

  On the TV set, when JBM began to explain in simple terms two possible ways out of the crisis, everybody understood him – a rare occurrence in political debate. When he went on to discuss the French national debt and future employment opportunities linked to the new web economy, everyone understood that, too, and the reporters in the studio exchanged glances. JBM had gone more than a minute over his allotted time and everyone had forgotten all about the official candidate – his adviser was throwing panicked looks at the presenter, who was pretending not to notice. It was JBM in the hot seat, and he had an answer to every question: businesses going under, the influence of Brussels on French policy, working hours, pensions … On social networks, mentions of ‘JBM – Jean-Bernard Mazart’ were mounting up by the minute. Interns who had been told to keep half an eye on the ‘likes’, ‘comments’ and ‘shares’ on the programme’s website and Facebook wondered if there was a bug on their server, the notifications were coming in so quickly. Over the past fifteen minutes the programme had reached a 30 per cent audience share. Three minutes later, it became the most watched programme of the night across all channels.

  Eventually BFM-TV’s Jean-Jacques Bourdin, looking like an ageing rock star, stepped in before his colleagues had a chance to speak, aware that he was taking his place in TV history – perhaps even in the history of France itself. ‘One last question and it’s a straightforward one. We’re six months away from the next presidential election. Why not throw your hat in the ring?’

  Aurore jumped. Bourdin caught her eye for a split second and she gave him the hardest stare she could muster, trying to convey that she would knock his chair over and scratch his face until she drew blood if she could. Slightly thrown, JBM raised his eyebrows and smiled.

  ‘Your assistant’s frowning,’ the journalist teased.

  The camera swung round to Aurore, whose expression was now impassive.

  ‘Come on then, what do you say?’ Bourdin pressed him.

  The room went silent. JBM glanced round at the official candidate, who had by now realised the extent to which he had shot himself in the foot by inviting the Arcadia boss to share the stage with him, and glared back at him. JBM understood the meaning of the look, but all he could do was to keep smiling.

  ‘No, honestly, I don’t think so,’ he said at last.

  ‘Really?’ Jean-Jacques Bourdin asked coolly.

  The switchboard was abuzz and tweets were streaming in at two hundred a second.

  ‘Are you sure?’ The journalist pressed JBM for an answer as his colleagues seethed, ready to see him castrated on live TV for having dared to steal their scoop.

  ‘OK,’ JBM wrapped things up. ‘I think that’ll do for tonight.’

  He stood up and shook hands with the journalists before taking the cold, sticky hand of the official presidential hopeful, who watched him walk out of the studio and told himself that the man would be the death of him. That, as his life drew to a close, he would see JBM’s tall, slim frame and silver hair silhouetted under the spotlights.

  The Lincoln pulled up on the gravel driveway. Max, the driver, opened the door to let JBM and Aurore out and they walked up the front steps. The sound of the television could be heard coming from the living room. On the flat-screen TV, François Larnier was trying to speak convincingly about his plans for tackling youth unemployment. He listed his proposals on his fingers like a child counting, while knitting his brow, apparently aiming to more closely resemble a grown man. Blanche lowered the volume and clapped slowly, without looking round at her husband.

  ‘You’re the next president of this country,’ she said. ‘And I know what I’m talking about. My father did too. Domitile Kavanski called,’ she added breezily, picking up a petit four from the tray beside her.

  ‘Who?’

  Blanche turned in her white leather armchair, smiling in simultaneous disdain and despair.

  ‘Domitile Kavanski,’ she repeated more loudly.

  The name, which began softly and ended like the crack of a whip, did not bode well. JBM and Aurore exchanged looks.

  ‘Don’t tell me she didn’t get hold of you, Aurore?’

  ‘She did,’ replied Aurore. ‘She sent me five texts.’

  ‘And you didn’t say anything?’ gasped Blanche.

  ‘I was waiting for the right moment. She’s the number one publicist in France,’ she said, turning to JBM.

  ‘Call her back straight away,’ Blanche told her.

  ‘Out of the question,’ JBM shot back.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it …’

  ‘No, don’t go, Aurore,’ JBM replied. ‘Do you want to stay here?’

  ‘I’m going home, JBM.’

  ‘Fine. I’ll show Aurore out.’

  ‘Now Blanche is on my back – that’s the last thing I need,’ grumbled JBM as they walked along the covered walkway that led to the garden.

  ‘Yep, good luck with that,’ Aurore replied evenly.

  Max got out of the car and opened the door. As Aurore was about to walk down the steps, JBM took her by the arm and held her back.

  ‘Listen, tell me. What should we do?’

  When things got hectic, he sometimes forgot to use the polite vous form of address. This was not true of Aurore, who bit her lip, paused and said, ‘You play the game. A bit of PR with Kavanski will get Blanche off your case. You already have a profile; you’ll become even better known, and if the wave starts to rise you stand aside and let it keep coming, and then …’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘You use an interview as the opportunity to make a smooth exit, like Jacques Delors quashing rumours of presidential aspirations on 7 sur 7 in 1994. And there you have it, joke over.’

  ‘And there you have it … You might be on to something, you know.’

  ‘You run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, then you leave the hare be and take the hounds back to their kennels, end of story.’

  ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you,’ he said.

  Aurore smiled and shrugged, and headed towards the car.

  ‘How old were you in 1994?’ JBM called after her.

  ‘Eleven, I think!’ replied Aurore.

  The driver closed the car door after her with a dull thud, the headlights came on and they drove off down the gravel drive. JBM returned to the house.

  ‘You’re all they’re talking about!’ Blanche called from the living room.

  JBM veered off into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of Chablis.

  Blanche

  The Lincoln and its driver are more or less the only luxuries JBM allows himself; the only property he owns is an 180 m2 flat in Paris that he’s never lived in and has rented out for years. That flat, three paperweights and a collection of old telephone directories aside, all his possessions would fit inside one suitcase. He finds the idea of paying seventy-five thousand euros for a return flight to New York in a Fan Jet Falcon ridiculous and unnecessary; he’s always used commercial airlines. ‘You’re a kind of ascetic,’ I’ve often told him. ‘You turned up here with your suitcase and your books, and you’ve no more to show for yourself twenty-eight years on. All you’ve got is a n
ew Lincoln and a new driver when the old one retired. Oh, wait, and a watch …’ I think that really is the only thing I’ve known him treat himself to – a Breguet, the kind of watch that lasts a lifetime, so he’ll never buy another one. I don’t think I’ve ever truly understood the man – he was made to live alone, with a computer, a bottle of water and a driver. You could leave him like that for months and he’d be absolutely fine. He avoids socialising with the rich, never accepts gifts, does his best to get out of invitations. People sense this about him before they even meet him, this kind of reserve. They find him mysterious. There’s no mystery to him; my husband is the only businessman in France who’d eat a plate of egg mayonnaise and a bottle of Perrier at a bistro counter for lunch – and he does it, quite often. He never has any money on him; it’s unheard of for him to have two hundred euros in his wallet. I actually don’t think he likes money.

  When I met him, he was living in the junior suite of a hotel – not your average neighbourhood guesthouse, but not a five-star palace either. I was fascinated by him – a man without possessions, no flat, no house, no paintings. Nothing, except an American car and the services of a driver to take him around France and Europe. His suitcase was always left out; he didn’t even bother putting it away in the wardrobe. It was as if he might be leaving at the end of the day, or within the hour. I asked him how long exactly he had been living there. He took his time before answering, ‘Three years, I think … maybe four. I forget.’ ‘Why here?’ ‘I had lunch here once …’ he said, as if the fact you had once eaten at a hotel could explain the fact you were living there all year round, four years later. Suite 418. When I got home to my own place, everyone around me seemed puffed up, pretentious, totally frivolous. I couldn’t stop thinking about him, back in suite 418. When he bought his flat, he found it difficult to feel at home there; it felt too big. He decided to rent it out and go back to his hotel room. After that, everything happened very quickly.